Country clubs lose golfers to recession
DAYTON (AP) — Country clubs are cutting costs and opening their golf courses to nonmembers in order to stay alive during the recession.
Many clubs in western Ohio have suffered heavy membership losses over the past decade, and the recession is compounding the problem as people cut luxury expenses out of their budgets.
Some clubs have reduced or eliminated initiation fees, while others have waived or postponed fees for golfers willing to commit to a year or two of dues for trial memberships. Walnut Grove Country Club fired its kitchen staff and hired a vending company to provide its food services. Greenville Country Club has opened its course to the public.
Belonging to a country club is like owning a second luxury car, but exclusivity isn’t appreciated anymore, said Steve Jurick, executive director of the Miami Valley Golf Association.
“People used to belong to a Dayton country club for life,” Jurick said. “The young people don’t have as much of a connection with a club in that they don’t see it as a lifetime commitment. They’re more mobile. And at the end of the day they’re more concerned about how they use their resources.”
The National Golf Federation reported last spring that the number of private golf clubs across the U.S. peaked at 4,898 in 1988 and fell to 4,415 in 2008. Ten percent to 15 percent of the 500 remaining clubs reported serious financial troubles.
Tom Lovett, president of the Dayton Country Club board of directors, said too many private golf clubs have been built in recent years.
“Country clubs will still go on, but there will be fewer of them,” he said. “And they will have to gear their staffs for fewer members.”
Membership has declined for years at many courses. Ten years ago, Dayton Country Club had 375 members and 25 people on a waiting list to join. Today, the club has just 279 members.
Officials dropped its initiation fee from $20,000 to $15,000 spread over three years.
Miami Valley Golf Club, which had 30,000 annual rounds of golf played on its course 10 years ago, has been averaging 17,000 to 20,000 in recent years, said Colin Miller, who works at the club.
Jurick said the number of private club members subscribing to a local handicap tracking service dropped more than 7 percent from October 2007 to October 2008, a loss of 587 golfers.
Lovett, who performs executive searches for businesses, attributed the membership decline in part to the fact that many corporations no longer include memberships in their compensation packages.
“The corporate executives don’t get the write-offs like they used to,” he said. “Those kinds of perks have been going away.”
After paying the initiation fee, members of a country club have annual obligations ranging from $5,000 to $8,000, not including cart fees for golf.
By contrast, well-manicured municipal courses such as Yankee Trace in Centerville and Heatherwoode in Springboro offer 18 holes of golf for about $50.
“The old adage used to be: If you have to calculate your cost per round at a country club, then you shouldn’t be a member of a private club,” Jurick said. “Now society calculates everything on a per-use basis. At the end of the day, people are more concerned about how they use their resources, and there’s more competition for the dollar.”